5 SEO Tips to Take Your Ecommerce Website to the Next Level
March 27th 2021 | By Sarah McInerney
Are you getting the sales you expected from your ecommerce website? If not, it could be that, quite simply, it’s not showing up in the search engines in a high enough spot to be noticed. For the ecommerce website, SEO is not just helpful, it’s absolutely vital if you’re going to climb above your competitors and pull in those sales. Let’s take a look at some powerful ecommerce SEO strategies you can implement to make that happen.
1. Choose the right keywords for your content
Keywords matter, especially in ecommerce. Take time to carry out in-depth keyword research, choosing the words and phrases that will help you rank within specific niches where your competitors haven’t yet made headway. Be careful not to choose keywords that are too broad or too competitive.
Go too competitive and it will take you a very long time to achieve good rankings, indeed if you ever do. Too broad and you will face a high bounce rate and low conversion rate where people aren’t finding what they were looking for. This will waste your time, and a high bounce rate will have a negative impact on your search engine rankings too.
2. Add useful, quality content to your ecommerce website
Quality content builds site authority and trust. Plus, if you get things right with search intent, matching your content to what people are actually looking for (information, answers or product recommendations for example) then you are likely to see a jump in ranking position, which will boost your visibility.
Useful content is a classic ecommerce SEO tactic. It encourages visitors to stick around for longer, and dwell time itself is a crucial ranking factor that can impact positively on search rankings. Great content will also generate backlinks which will help you rank higher; it will prompt a higher click through rate, and it will enhance brand recognition. Branding is important for SEO, and useful content presents you as a knowledgeable authority and trusted source. All the benefits are interlinked, making excellent content doubly important.
Blogs, articles and guides all work well for ecommerce websites. It’s your chance to get ranked for the keywords people are actually using to find your products.
Useful content is a classic ecommerce SEO tactic. Add quality blogs and articles to help rank your ecommerce site at the top of the search rankings.
3. Check your page speed
A slow website is a search engine rankings killer. Google places huge emphasis on website speed, which is a key factor in its new Page Experience ranking algorithm.
Page loading speed is especially important for ecommerce websites, where people simply won’t hang around to shop if they have to wait for images or information to load. Aside from a negative user experience, slower load speeds mean Google can’t crawl as many pages in its allocated crawl budget, which means page indexing can also suffer.
Research shows that 40 per cent of web users will abandon a site that takes longer than three seconds to load. And with speed improvements implemented, Search Engine Land reported a 20 per cent reduction in abandonment rate.
Here’s how page speed affects Google rankings, how to check it, and what to do to improve it.
4. Write compelling product descriptions, and make them unique
Compelling product descriptions have the power to boost conversion rates. If you are a retailer, you may be tempted to simply take manufacturer product descriptions and use them word for word on your own website. But there are two fundamental problems with this approach.
Firstly, you will be duplicating content, which could land you a penalty with Google. And secondly, the descriptions may not necessarily be orientated towards your specific audience and may be lacking in relevant keywords.
What you need is unique, appealing descriptions for all your products. Whilst this can be time consuming to achieve, it really is worth the effort and will set you apart from the competition. Aim for clear, keyword-rich, descriptive, interesting content that works well for your audience. In other words, speak their language, and deliver the information they need.
Also be sure not to copy other original content from manufacturers, such as blogs and guides. Again you’ll hit a problem with duplicate content penalties from Google, and the manufacturer may not appreciate it either.
5. Optimise your product images
Images are a driving force on ecommerce sites. People won’t buy something they haven’t seen, so it’s vital to put a good dose of effort into getting it right with your product imagery.
Quality images are crucial of course, but they’re also your chance to boost SEO. Images appear in Google searches, and have the power to drive traffic to your website.
There are ways of optimising images for SEO. Be sure to add a keyword rich description to the ALT tag, optimise image file names for the product name, include descriptive captions and keep the size down so that you tick the page loading speed box.
Need help getting your ecommerce website ranked?
Your online store has an important job to do, but it’s not going to deliver those sales unless it can be easily found online.
If you’d rather not wait forever to climb above your competitors in the search results, talk to Figment. We’ve been helping businesses achieve top search engine positions for many years. Our strategies are proven to work quickly and effectively, achieving results that exceed clients’ expectations.
To discover how we can help you with ecommerce SEO and help boost your sales, you are welcome to get in touch.